Novo drills locked in on hunt for Pilbara gold

Novo Resources Corporation continues to intercept significant gold mineralisation as it seeks to unearth the Pilbara’s next major gold deposit.

Management says the project’s geological characteristics, revealed from 50,000m of drilling to date, stack up against the mineralisation at De Grey Mining’s adjacent 10.6-million-ounce Mallina gold project.

Drilling has identified multiple new targets at the company’s Becher project, including a big priority area of mineralisation. It has prompted an immediate extension to its drilling program.

Becher spans a 20-square-kilometre area of the Egina Gold Camp in the underexplored Mallina Basin in Western Australia’s Northern Pilbara region. The project directly neighbours the bulging Mallina deposit and lies just 2.5 km south of De Grey’s Withnell South discovery.

Novo kicked off its 2023 air-core (AC) program at Becher in mid-April and has so far dropped 720 AC holes for more than 20,000m of drilling, with about 80 holes pending assay results. The drilling program is testing multiple, high-priority structural and intrusion-hosted gold targets at the Heckmair and Irvine prospects, following significant gold and pathfinder results.

Most of the drilling has been 320m-spaced infill drill lines at the Heckmair intrusion, in addition to some closer spaced lines on gold anomalies previously identified in the Irvine Shear corridor. The more recent drilling has been at Irvine, concentrated around previously identified gold anomalies, and it continues to identify intercepts across a significant strike length.

The company says results have now confirmed grade continuity at Irvine and combined with its RC program completed in last year’s fourth quarter, indicate variations in dip direction for mineralised structures across the prospect. Holes intersecting mineralisation dip both to the north-west and to the south-east.

All up, Novo has completed more than 50,000m of AC drilling at Becher, generating significant gold and multi-element assay results that have delivered a “high-level of confidence” for management to continue its drilling program. The company identified multiple targets, including the big priority area of anomalism across some 5sq km and is now planning for deeper drilling.

While this year’s drilling has predominantly been at the eastern Heckmair and Irvine prospects, the program has now moved to the Whillans Shear.

Novo Resources Corporation executive co-chairman and acting chief executive officer Michael Spreadborough said: “When completing this type of program, this is the tenor and scale of results which validate our exploration team’s hypothesis of the prospectivity of Becher and support our program ahead of commencing deeper drilling. Importantly, Becher is displaying all the right geological characteristics to compare favourably to the mineralisation at the adjacent Mallina Gold Project and we are excited to be advancing our drilling program. We are in the right area for major gold deposits and have a standout exploration team focused on discovering the next major gold deposit in the Pilbara.”

Novo’s second target of its aggressive Pilbara exploration program – its Nunyerry North prospect – is further south in the Egina Gold Camp, where a high-grade soil anomaly was previously identified.

Having completed ethnographic and archaeological heritage clearances for the prospect, the company is set to kick off its maiden reverse-circulation (RC) drill program at Nunyerry in the second half of the year. The final drill program design and planning is now underway.

With the drilling program extended and promising results continuing to roll in, it will be interesting to see if Novo can come good on its goal of discovering the Pilbara’s next major gold deposit.

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